Southern California -- this just in

Sweeping Sheriff's Department reforms win praise amid scandal

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca
has won praise for agreeing to sweeping reforms aimed at improving the management and
oversight of his agency amid allegations of deputy brutality against
inmates.

Peter Eliasberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Southern California, said his organization welcomed Baca's
announcement but noted that the ACLU had complained for years about
brutality in the jails. Miriam Krinsky, the executive director of the
Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence, said she was heartened that Baca
had responded so positively.

"We're very pleased," she said. "We
think it's vitally important that there's independent, comprehensive
oversight and a vigilant eye to make sure commitments are carried out."

One of the key recommendations accepted by Baca is to create an independent inspector general's office with the authority to
scrutinize Baca's agency. The move would significantly strengthen
civilian monitoring by giving the outside body the power to conduct
investigations inside the jails and elsewhere in the department.

Baca's
move comes several days after a blue-ribbon panel appointed by the County Board of Supervisors blamed him for problems of excessive force
in the county's lockups, which house about 19,000 inmates. The panel
said Baca did not heed repeated warnings about brutality and other
problems and did not pay attention to his jails.

Baca
had resisted committing to the commission's recommendations before they
became public last week, but said Wednesday he planned to implement
them all.

"I couldn't have written them better myself.... We will
be a stronger and safer jail," Baca said at a news conference on the
third floor of Men's Central Jail, the site of many of the most
troubling allegations, including beatings and the formation of an
aggressive gang-like deputy clique.

Baca spoke to reporters from
inside the jail's chapel, standing in front of a large cross while
roughly 100 inmates clad in dark blue jail scrubs sat silently in the
pews.

Flanked by about two dozen members of his command staff, the
sheriff said he agreed with the commission's suggestion that he hire an
outside custody expert to run his jails, saying he has already started a
nationwide search. Baca, however, said he had no immediate plans to
discipline senior managers whom he had previously claimed kept him in
the dark about the jails' problems.

At the same time, Baca said
Undersheriff Paul Tanaka is now under investigation over allegations in
the commission's report that he helped foster a culture of abuse in the
jails. Baca raised doubts about those allegations, saying many of them
were old and had been disputed.

Baca described the reforms as a
historic shift for the Sheriff's Department. Though the agency has for
years been monitored by two civilian watchdogs, neither had the power to
launch investigations, and the jail commission found that gaps in
oversight allowed problems to go undetected.

If Baca implements
all 63 of the commission's reforms, the changes would also have major
implications for deputies working the jails.

The standard
punishment for dishonesty would be dismissal rather than suspension.
Deputies would no longer have their use of force investigated by the
same sergeants who supervise them. And more supervisors would walk the
jail floors to monitor deputies.

"I do have some deputies who have done some terrible things," Baca said. "You can't judge the whole by the few."

The
reforms include a major restructuring of the department's workforce.
Currently, all new recruits work the jails for several years before
moving to patrol, creating a custody staff that's young, inexperienced
and often unhappy to be in the jails. By committing to the commission's
reforms, Baca agreed to create a separate custody division with a
professional workforce of deputies who would spend their careers in the
jails and grow experienced in how to manage inmates.

Baca said he
has already gone a long way toward making reforms since the jail scandal
erupted last year, when The Times revealed the FBI was secretly investigating deputy brutality and other misconduct in the
jails. He said those changes had helped to dramatically reduce force.
But he conceded that more needed to be done.

The
recommendations, made by a seven-member commission that included former
judges and a police chief, were based on interviews with current and
former Sheriff's Department officials, jailhouse witnesses, testimony
from experts and internal department records. Its investigation painted
a grim image of Baca's jails over the years. Among the findings were
that top supervisors joked about inmate abuse, encouraged deputies to
push ethical boundaries and ignored alarming signs of problems with
excessive force.

The commission called on Baca to become
"personally engaged in oversight of the jails" and to "hold his
high-level managers accountable for failing to address use-of-force
problems." Tanaka, Baca's top aide whom the commission accused of
discouraging discipline for misconduct, should have no responsibility
for the department's custody operations, the commission said.

At
the news conference, Baca presented a new organizational chart that
showed only administrative services reporting to Tanaka, who the sheriff
said would continue to focus on the department's budget.

Several
inmates who were brought in to fill the pews at the news conference said
they felt as though they were being used as props by the sheriff.

"It's
a dog and pony show," said inmate Geoffrey Nielsen, 38. "We're here to
be pranced out.... People don't deserve to get beat up for mouthing
off."